According to a report from Nintendo Co. on January 3rd, over 10 million Nintendo DS handheld gaming systems have been sold in the market, including 4 million systems in North America and 5 million game consoles in Japan.
Nintendo’s Vice President of Marketing, Perrin Kaplan, stated that the company sold approximately 3 million handheld games to North American consumers in 2005. This number was only 1.2 million game consoles in 2004.
Meanwhile, Nintendo’s competitor, Sony Corp, sold 3.2 million PlayStation Portable (PSP) handheld gaming systems in North America between March 2005 and December 2005.
Perrin Kaplan also mentioned that around 550,000 users have utilized the Wi-Fi connectivity feature of the Nintendo DS to play games online since the service launched a few weeks ago. This online gaming option is completely free for those with an Internet connection.